A workflow is a specific sequence or series of tasks that, when performed, seek to accomplish one or more goals. In some cases, workflows may be represented or thought of as a state machine having two or more states connected by various transitions therebetween. Transitions from state to state may be triggered by or based on user input, automated input, information being stored in a database, the value of information in a database changing, or by way of other mechanisms. Workflows may be supported by way of a remote network management platform that provides a web-based interface for workflow definition, execution, and management.
Enterprise workflows may integrate information from various sources, including from remote services hosted on third-party servers outside of the remote network management platform and the enterprise. For example, a workflow applying a particular information technology (IT) policy to an enterprise user's computing device or account may consider the capabilities of the computing device as well as the user's profile and access permissions. The former information may be stored locally within the remote network management platform, and is thus readily available and under control of the enterprise. On the other hand, the latter information may be outsourced to a remote service.
In order to obtain the user's profile and access permissions, the remote network management platform may be configured with appropriate credentials to access the remote service, as well as a schema thereof that defines tables, fields, forms, application programming interfaces, and so on that contain the sought-after information. Nonetheless, the remote service or the enterprise may, from time to time, change this schema. If the remote network management platform does not adapt its access requests accordingly, its workflows will either fail or be unable to access all of the information available by way of the remote service.